january
Hard to believe that we started this blog a whole year ago already! We started off the new year with taking friends to Crofton’s (we love pairing their pretzels with Mad Mole beer!) , donuts downtown, and finally tried out Burgaw Brewing! Towards the end of the month, we lucked out with a few days of unusually warm weather and hit up Wrightsville Beach to take advantage of the free off season parking. Plus, post beach stroll margs with a side of chips & queso are always good days in our book 😉
february
We marveled at the beauty of backyard sunsets and broke up the cozy days at home with outings to Fermental, Brunswick Beer Exchange for Girl Scout and beer flight pairings, and some lucky finds while antiquing. Our “what’s new” pick of the month found us a The Little Dipper. We also enjoyed chilly beach days, festive dinners at home, and I hosted my neighborhood book club.
march
The start of spring had us ready to be outdoors! We celebrated our 9th dating anniversary together with a hike around Carolina Beach State Park where we spotted some native Venus flytraps in the wild – so cool! Spent our weekends at the beach, taking our dogs out with us for patio beers at Leland Brewing Company, and checked out both On Thyme and The Ibis.
At the end of the month, our sweet Jupiter celebrated her 10th birthday, and just a few short days later we had to make the difficult decision to put her down after she was diagnosed with malignant mammary cancer in December. We miss her sass every day! I started our spring garden seeds and planted endless flowers so we’d have something pretty to remember her by throughout the changing seasons.
april
For Christmas, Phil had surprised me with tickets to see T-Pain for Azalea Fest and we very much enjoyed “Wiscansin” coming to Wilmington! We also caught the solar eclipse and welcomed the return of both the downtown farmer’s markets as well as rosé & #PubSub (iykyk!) beach days with friends. Some sips of the month took us to Banter, Bespoke, Hidden Grounds, as well as both Palate and The Kitchen Sink for tunes during the “Alt-zalea” Music Fest. We spent a fun long weekend chasing the spring blooms around Washington D.C. together (which can be found here, here, and here)! Explored a few local Earth Day markets and sadly said goodbye to our beloved local wine bar. We ended the month celebrating Beam’s 7th birthday with a homemade pup-cake!
may
Not going to lie, the first few weeks started off very rough with multiple trips to the emergency vet where our happy-go-lucky Beam was unexpectedly diagnosed with stage 4 lymphoma. When his conditions quickly took a turn for the worse we had to make the whirlwind decision that it was time to say goodbye, despite us being no where ready for that kind of back-to-back heartbreak after just having lost Jupiter.
A trip to Texas for Phil’s sister’s nuptials ended up being a nice distraction to help to try to get our mind off of things. We loved getting the short time to visit and catch up with extended family and friends and were tasked at putting together a cheese “table” for the wedding reception – because everything is bigger in TX 😉 When we returned, we ventured down to Southport and took Rye on adventures out to Jelly Cabinet to acquire evening cinnamon rolls!
june
To combat the summer heat, we ate our weight in blueberry wine slushies at the annual Blueberry Festival in Burgaw, tried some funky beers, along with homemade ice cream from Wandering Cone, and I baked endless batches of these yummy brownies! We marveled at our pretty garden blooms and vegetables – explosions of red bee balm, orange gladiolus, pink zinnias, blue hydrangeas and purple mint. The best money I think we spent was on a bucket hat for Rye and he accompanied us on trips to the beach and to Waterline for Gin Fizz’s farewell tour at Waterline Brewing. I went on a fun solo book signing and Phil took me out for a date night dining along the water in Ocean Isle!
(part two coming soon!)